Chapter 40
FORTY
ZEDEKIAH
Fucking finally.
I’ve been watching out the window for Harper. I scoot out the front door the second I see her step out of the car at the curb, pulling two suitcases packed with all our shit.
“What’s going on?” she calls, meeting me halfway down the driveway. “What’s with the suitcases?”
I can see the panic in her eyes, and I hate her having to be upset. But it’s time to pull the ripcord.
She looks past my shoulder, and I know she’s looking for Caleb’s car. “Where’s everyone?” By which I know she means him. And then her face crumples. “Did you know? About what Silas was going to do for me?”
I hurry to wrap my arms around her. I breathe her in, my eyes falling closed in relief at having her this close again. Fuck, I’ve missed having her in my arms.
“I suspected,” I whisper into her hair. Not a lie. “And he used his one phone call to tell Helen. I’m so sorry, babe. I mean, Harper,” I say, quickly checking myself. Now’s no time to be making her mad.
I clear my throat when she pulls back, staring again at the suitcases.
“And I’m so sorry, Harp.” I shake my head, voice heavy. “But she kicked us out.”
Harper’s eyes snap back to mine.
“What?” she asks, breathless.
“After what happened with Caleb at school—” I break off, knowing she knows what I’m referring to.
Her eyes drop to the concrete of the driveway, cheeks going bright red. “I can explain—”
“Maybe if it had just been that…” I trail off. “But then, with Silas going to prison for you, she asked me to pack up our shit and tell you to leave. She couldn’t—”
I swallow hard. “She didn’t want to look at you again. You know she’s so sick. I don’t think she could handle it. She said she needed it to just be Caleb and her again for a while while she focuses on her health.”
Harper takes a step backward like I just smacked her in the stomach with a baseball bat.
Fuck. This sucks. I hate doing this to her.
“And Caleb?” Her voice breaks on his name.
I try to reach for her, but she yanks away.
“Helen asked him to go to the library while I packed us up. So he wouldn’t be here when you got back. She knew he wouldn’t be strong enough.”
It’s like swallowing a ball of sticker burrs, but I manage to keep going. “He told me to tell you he loves you but that you know he’d do anything for Helen. And she asked him to let you go…” I wince as I get the next part out, “… because you weren’t good for him.”
I see the moment Harper’s knees go out, and I’m ready.
I catch her.
“I’m so sorry, Harp,” I whisper, inhaling her sweet cherry-blossom-scented hair. “He said to check your phone for his goodbye but that then he’d be blocking your number.”
“What?!” she cries, yanking her phone out of her pocket. “No!”
She just keeps shaking her head as tears spring to her eyes. I watch her eyes scan the message in record time.
And then she’s immediately stabbing the call button on her phone. But it doesn’t ring. From a distance, I hear the short tone before it disconnects. Harper makes a furious, disbelieving noise before she hits it again. And again.
“Harp. We have to go. I’m so sorry,” I say again, my heart breaking at seeing her so upset.
She looks back up at the house, tears running down her cheeks, taking another step before stopping herself, and then a giant sob hits her chest.
A black Honda stops at the curb behind us. It’s the Uber I had ready and called as soon as I saw Harper pulling in.
“That’s our ride,” I say, helping her back to her feet from where she’s sagged toward the cement again.
“I can’t,” she whimpers. “I can’t leave them.”
“You have to, honey. It’s what they want.” I kiss the top of her head, eyes squeezing shut hard for a second. “We always knew this was temporary. That we were just passing through.”
She shakes her head, sobbing harder.
But at least she’s clinging to my arm now and moving with me when I start leading her towards the Uber.
I just need to get her in that back seat. Then onto the bus to Austin when we get to the bus station. It’ll be easier once we get moving.
“C’mon. We’ve gotta go.”
“I can’t even say goodbye?” she cries.
“I’m so sorry. It’s what Helen wanted. She was feeling so bad after today’s treatment. She just really didn’t think she could handle it.”
With another low cry, Harper nods and turns.
Harper stops halfway to the car, her hand flying to her mouth. “Sox. I have to get Sox.”
She looks back toward the house, but I catch her arm gently before she can start moving backwards again.
“Harper,” I say softly, and wait until she looks at me. “Sox has a home now. A real one. With people who love her.”
Her eyes fill with fresh tears. “She’s not a stray anymore. She’s got—” I swallow hard, like it pains me to say it. “She’s got the family she was meant to have. The one she’s been looking for.”
Harper’s face crumbles, and I pull her against my chest. “At least one of us found where we belonged, right?” I whisper into her hair. “Don’t take that away from her. Let her have the happy ending.”
She sobs harder, but she’s not fighting me anymore. Not moving back toward the house.
“We’re the strays, Harp,” I say quietly. “Always have been. It’s just you and me now.” The way it’s supposed to be.
She nods against my chest, and I guide her toward the car. The Uber driver pops the trunk, and I load our bags while keeping one arm around Harper.
“At least Sox is safe,” she whispers brokenly as I help her into the backseat. “At least someone gets to stay.”
Then I slide into the back seat beside the woman of my dreams.
“Okay,” I tell the Uber driver as I slide into the backseat beside a still hysterically crying Harper. I put an arm around her and pull her close.
She’s finally mine.
And mine alone.
“Shhh,” I whisper, running my fingers through her hair and holding her close. Just like I used to.
Everything’s finally back the way it should be.
Look, I feel real bad about some of the shit I’ve done in my life.
But I don’t feel bad about this.
Any of it.
I’ve only done what I had to in order to get me and Harper free.
Just like she did for me.
The only true thing my momma ever told me before she took off and left me with Frank is that life’s a bitch and then you die.
That bitch was a real whore. Not much nicer than Frank, except her right hook didn’t have as much strength behind it.
I never had nothin’ gentle or nice my whole life.
Not ’til I met Harp.
Name like a song. Body so soft and warm when she’d climb in my window and huddle with me under the cover at night. Arms wrapped around me tight like I was the best thing in her world. The only thing she ever cared about.
And she’s my world. She kept me going when there was nothing else in my shithole life to keep goin’ for.
These people here? They got lots of things to keep going for. Money, least wise.
It’s real sad about what’s happened to Miss Helen, sure. That lady made a mean chocolate chip cookie. And sure, she was always nice to me.
But she’s dead now.
No reason to tell Harp about it, far as I can see. It’ll just make her sad, and I don’t like it when Harper’s sad. Well, except when she holds me like she is now. I wrap my arms tighter around her as she sobs into my chest.
It’s been so long since I had her this close.
I’m just setting things right.
And there’s no need for Harper to know Helen fell over dead on her way to get the mail this afternoon, a little while after that bastard son of hers got back from school.
It was a neighbor who saw her and called the ambulance.
She was dead before they got here. Embolism or some shit to do with the cancer.
Caleb was screaming at them to keep doing CPR and pumping away at the corpse all the way to the hospital.
He threw a shit fit when they wouldn’t let him in the ambulance, then tore out of the driveway after them in that fancy ass car of his.
Couldn’t have been better timing, frankly.
I mean, I’m one smart fucker, but even I couldn’t have predicted that.
“Shhh,” I whisper, over and over as I hold Harper tighter.
I was so used to having her all to myself. It was bullshit to get free of Frank, only to get here and find not just one but two barriers between her and me still.
Silas and the little rat bastard. Caleb. Fuck, I hate that little bitch. Knowing he was fucking her, right under my nose? I wanted to smash his face in, then cut his dick off.
But I was patient instead.
If there’s one fucking thing I can do, it’s wait.
And plan.
I’ve been planning today for months. How could I take out both of my obstacles but have plausible deniability so none of it could ever blow back on me?
After all, there was no point if I didn’t get to ride off into the sunset with the girl.
I didn’t see a clear path until that New Year’s party. And the beautiful McKenzie. A mean girl with a grudge, who was used to lackeys doing her dirty work.
And there I was, a willing lackey, ready to offer all sorts of solutions to her problems. A video that could not only destroy both Caleb and Harper’s reputation but also make Harper feel like her best friend had betrayed her.
And Marie wouldn’t contradict it, thanks to a little extra dirt I provided on the girl. She was sweet, sure, but the collateral damage was necessary to throw Harper off from realizing it was me who’d actually snapped that video of them on the stairs.
Fucking disgusting, the way the two of them were always sneaking off together. Thinking they were hiding it from me. I don’t know how their parents didn’t see it, the goddamn googly eyes they had for each other.
Silas deserved to be punished for that if nothing else. How could he let his daughter get dicked down like that underneath his own roof? And by her stepbrother?
I mean, and yeah, there was the added bonus that planting the weed and getting Silas to take the fall got me in good with the Lonestar Devils.
They’ve been pissed about him not letting them use that sex dungeon of his to launder their money, and they always make good on their threats when you don’t do what they say.
I’ll be a patched-in member in no time.
Yeah, it was a risk, planting the shit in Harper’s locker. What if Silas let her take the fall instead of stepping up?
But I had a feeling that sentimental bastard would do the right thing.
Ever since I got here, he’s been pulling me aside to have little chats.
About what it means to be a man. Like he thought he was some sort of fucking mentor or Uncle Iroh from Airbender trying to lead me away from a bad path. Stupid motherfucker.
I know my path.
It’s with Harper.
We’re endgame.
Nothing’s gonna distract me from that.
Even if, worst case scenario, I was wrong about Silas taking the fall for the pot and Harper had to do a little time, eh, no big deal.
If she had been sent downstate for a year or two, I’d just keep waiting for her like I was already doing.
Meanwhile, I could start earning my keep as a grunt with the MC.
But now look, everything’s worked out smooth as butter.
Smoother, even.
I thought I’d have to find some other clever opportunity to finish severing Harper’s connection from the rat bastard.
But then Helen went and dropped dead, conveniently getting Caleb out of the house so I could steal the girl.
It was quick thinking to grab his phone while he was watching those paramedics pump away at his moms on the grass.
I wrote Harper that last quick text, then deleted and blocked her number.
Last thing was to change the contacts in his phone—switching her number for the number of a burner phone I got recently and adding her name to it—so whenever he tries to call or text her, it comes to my burner.
Who really pays attention to anyone’s actual number these days anyway? We just see the name.
So finally, I get my reward.
No more waiting.
I squeeze Harper in my arms as her sobbing subsides to little hiccups. “Shhhhh. I’ve got you.” I kiss her forehead. “It’s just you and me against the world.”